It was cool outside that night -- remnants of winter fading into a wet spring sunset. April 16, 2013, and it hadn't rained for a solid "several" days, yet. That was the next week, looking at the calendar.

Individually, and sometimes in groups of two or three, Higbee citizens and Association board members shook hands as they filed through the front doors of the Higbee Christian Church, calling out names, and then waiting in space for one or another to catch up. Hovering. That is the word.

There were a whopping 13 of them present — shuffling their feet, laughing, some speaking louder, and some doing so in voices so soft, it was quiet in the room, just for their piece.

The church is small, but open enough. There is only so far that one person can truly hover inside of its main chapel before he or she runs out of real estate and is pumped into the next room.

They all sit there. There are two lines of tables that fold, and then a square of the same tables butted firmly to one another — a makeshift board of representatives enclave. Behind the board tables, a half-way divider splits vision from a stocked kitchen area to the west. There is a bathroom area on the eastern side.

Wilson is the vice president of the Higbee Cemetery Association — filling in for President Rebecca Hocker, who was unable to attend that night.

Minutes from the previous meeting were read and met with approval.

Financially, the Association was recently given a donation of over $11,000 from the Margaret Jones trust. They read a letter at that meeting from such, regarding the donation. They were told that it was expected that the Association would "do the right thing" with the moneys they were provided. Everyone present agreed that it was very nice of Jones to make such a donation, and they thanked her posthumously. The Higbee Cemetery Association is solely funded by such generosity, they said. The group has approximately $219,792.71 in its bank accounts and CDs, per information gathered during the continued financial portions of the meeting. Those funds are for the lone purpose of maintaining and keeping up the city's cemeteries.

There is just one problem:

The Higbee Cemetery Association does not exist.

* * *

Attending a Higbee Board of Aldermen meeting is a bit difficult for the regular working person. The meetings start at 5 p.m., or before. Individuals will periodically saunter through the main doorway into the council chambers 10, 15, or even 30 minutes into the meeting, itself. The board holds public comment times after the regular meeting portion is concluded. These consist of the mayor (Robert Ashworth) going around the room and asking each individual gathered if they have any questions for the aldermen (James Boggs, Max Borron, Debra Garner, and Elmore Wiggington), himself, or Utility Supervisor Ricky Switzer.

Page 2 of 6 - At their regular meeting this past Monday (May 13, which started at 4:55 p.m., per city minutes), concerns were brought before the board regarding the recent removal of all of the flowers from the Higbee Cemetery.

* * *

The Higbee Cemetery Association was started in 1973, by (amongst others) Doris Griffin, Thelma Summers, Ruth Ashworth, and Vera Mullier. The organization's purpose was to safeguard the donations made towards the upkeep of the city-owned cemetery, and to pay for expenses associated with said upkeep (the purchasing of equipment, paying of workers' wages, etc.).

And for the past 39 years, that was the way it went. Easy enough setup. Persons made donations to the Association. The Association compiled those funds. They distributed them to pay for the city's cemetery expenses as they came along.

That is, until May 2011. Around that time, the city invoked an audit that included the Higbee Cemetery Association under its blanket.

* * *

The flower removal took place either last Wednesday (May 8) or last Thursday (May 9), said Higbee citizen Sally Duffield.

"I went out there to get my basket," she said. "When I went out there, it was gone."

Duffield was one of the persons who brought up the missing flowers to the board at Monday's meeting. She said that it is her husband's family who is buried in the cemetery, and that they have been putting out flowers since at least the mid- to late-1970s. This is the first time such an occurrence has happened to them, she told the board.

Immediately after discovering her basket and the flowers in her mounted vases were missing, Duffield said she went home and called city hall. It took three calls before she was able to talk to the mayor.

"In the meantime," she said, "my husband went out and found our basket."

It was in the trash with the rest of the Higbee Cemetery flowers.

* * *

"We didn't ask for an audit," said Cemetery Association member Forrest Wright. "It was supposed to [cost] $6,000. It ended up being $22,000. [The city] would call the auditor and say 'look for this.' Then, [the city] didn't have the money to pay it, so they made the Cemetery Association pay for everything."

Wright was actually a member of the Higbee alderman board prior to the April 2010 election. He was ousted, along with then-Mayor Charla Bankhead and alderman Theresa Sinclair, for current aldermen Borron and Wiggington, and Mayor Ashworth, at that time.

"I was on the council for 12 years," Wright said. He retired from the Moberly Correctional Center after 31 years of service two years ago. Prior to that, he served an eight-year stint in the military.

A few months after the 2010 election, alderman Wyatt Wilson — the same one previously listed in this story — and alderman Susie Derboven both resigned from the board.

Ashworth would always side with Borron and Wiggington, Wright claims. Wilson and Derboven felt their votes never counted. They left.

In all, a total of seven prior city officials now either serve on the Higbee Cemetery Association board of directors, or attend the Cemetery Association meetings, they noted on April 16.

The aforementioned audit took approximately one year to complete, Wright said. He noted that it was uncovered that the Cemetery Association had not been keeping its endowment funds in an FDIC-secure deposit. This fact is corroborated by a letter to the editor from the City of Higbee to the Fayette Advertiser on Jan. 16 of this year. The audit also concluded that the Cemetery Association needed to "properly maintain a detailed investment ledger regarding the purchase and redemption of certificates of deposit to include all necessary information on each certificate."

"Back in 1973, when they did the bylaws," Wright said, "it said in there that the money should be in an FDIC-assured account. Nobody had ever had it in an assured account. Since the audit, though, we're legal by our bylaws. As soon as we found out, we changed it."

The first audit ended in approximately March of 2012. Within a week of that, Wright said, the city had ordered another audit be done.

The city informed the Association that they were breaking their contract in a July 25 memorandum from Mayor Ashworth.

It is believed by the Association members that Ashworth and the city are currently seeking the group's donation funds, which they have no access to, as the donations were made to the Association, and not to the City of Higbee.

While Ashworth and the city stated in their aforementioned letter to the editor that neither "I, nor the city, is after the cemetery funds," on at least two separate occasions, Ashworth, himself, told the Association following their contract termination that they must return said funds to the City of Higbee: "All records, funds, equipment, and property used or created in the operation and maintenance of the Higbee City Cemetery must be turned over immediately to the City of Higbee," he wrote, in a letter to the association on Aug. 29, 2012. And on the very same day that the city informed the Association of their contract termination, Ashworth stated, "I trust you will agree that it will be far better for the Cemetery if the Association voluntarily returns the City's cemetery funds, as requested in this letter, and cooperates with the City to continue the Association's mission (which is also its legal obligation) to fund the care, maintenance, and improvement of the Cemetery, which will now be under the management of the City."

Association bylaws stated at that time that the mayor and city clerk had to hold a place on the Higbee Cemetery Association Board, in a liaison-esque role. On or around Aug. 1, 2012, the Cemetery Association held a special meeting, at which time they ousted Ashworth and Higbee City Clerk Kathy Demirefe from their board, and voted to change their bylaws to include seven board positions, none of which had to be filled by an acting city official.

Page 4 of 6 - In March of 2013, the City of Higbee filed suit against the Higbee Cemetery Association for this action, as well as for the Association's prior loss of its 501(c)(3) non-profit status, among other reasons. The Association assured the MMI that their re-application paperwork is currently in the pipeline, being transacted, and that the loss of such was due to a clerical error on the city's part.

"It's taken this much time to get this far along," Ashworth told the MMI on Friday.

"I talked to the city," said Wright back in mid-April, "and they said they wouldn't take a penny from us, because we don't exist."

"How do you sue someone who doesn't exist?" said Wilson

* * *

Per city minutes from May 13, 2013, Ashworth noted that "he guessed [the flower removal] was his fault for not giving specific directions to new cemetery workers." The city is currently working on upkeep for the cemetery, without the funding of the Higbee Cemetery Association, due to their breaking of the longstanding contract almost a year ago. Before the upcoming Memorial Day holiday, Ashworth said, the flowers were to be removed to make way for mowers, then replaced if they weren't in bad shape. Switzer said that the aforementioned workers "were told to remove [only] the faded flowers, but they got carried away and removed all of the flowers."

"You didn't need to remove the flowers from my vase to mow," Duffield said. She also noted that hanging baskets were not something that normally got in the way of lawn mowers.

When asked who, exactly, these new cemetery workers were during Monday's meeting, Ashworth would only say that they were part-time seasonal city employees. He was asked this twice, from two different persons, and gave the same answer.

On Friday morning, when confronted with the issue, Ashworth told the MMI that one of the new cemetery workers had never mowed a cemetery before, and that the other had only done so sparingly. Ashworth said that the workers had been met with twice already concerning the flower matter, and said that a more "hands-on" meeting was in the works for next week. He said the two part-time workers might now just be "temporary," due to "the weather."

"We had new employees at the cemetery," he said. "They weren't used to our terminology. We can't be out there every minute."

"I think there was a total misunderstanding all the way around with who they hired," Duffield told the MMI on Thursday (May 16). "I think that there should be some sort of compensation [offered for those whose flowers were thrown away, but] I'm not going to ask for any compensation for it."

* * *

As part of their want from the lawsuit, the City of Higbee is asking that Ashworth and Demirefe be re-appointed as Cemetery Association Directors; that Wilson, Hocker, and Rita Painter (another person who brought up the missing flowers at Monday's meeting) be removed from the HCA board and barred from serving on such for at least 20 years; that the Association resume paying for care of the cemetery; that Wilson, Hocker, and Painter pay over and account to the Association moneys that have been mis-spent; that the Association keep better books; that the Association take all actions necessary to restore their 501(c)(3) status; and that the Association "divest...funds from speculative investments and other investments contrary to [their] bylaws."

Page 5 of 6 - When asked personally what the City hoped to gain from the lawsuit, Ashworth said that he would "rather not say right now."

* * *

It was pointed out at Monday's meeting that there was no announcement placed in the local newspaper about the removal of flowers from the cemetery for clean-up.

Higbee city ordinance 319, section 17, bill no. 83-17, states that "the sexton is herby authorized to remove any and all floral tributes, spray, plants, or emblems for the purposes of mowing and otherwise maintaining the cemetery, provided that public notice of such removals is published either in a journal or newspaper of general circulation in Randolph County at least seven days prior to the scheduled date of such removal or by his posting at least five public notices in as many public places within the city and at least seven days prior to the scheduled removal."

Per board minutes from the Monday meeting, City Clerk Demirefe "said she was sorry she did not remember to place an ad in paper [seven] days before cemetery flowers were removed." She said that "no one told her to [put] it [in]."

Duffield asked the board if they could at least provide an apology to the people whose flowers they had thrown away.

Demirefe and Alderman Wiggington expressed remorse for the incident.

"[And] Ricky [Switzer] did apologize," Duffield later told the MMI. "I do have to give him kudos for that. That's more than we got from anyone else."

"I'm not apologizing for nothing," Alderman Borron said. Borron had, at a meeting back on Aug. 16, 2010, stated that he "[did] not believe the cemetery [was] property of the City of Higbee" and that he "[did] not want City employees involved with it, and if it is the City's property, he would like to give the cemetery to the Association." He could be visibly seen rolling his eyes and making loud sighing noises as persons spoke with the council about their missing flowers during Monday's meeting.

The remainder of the board, including the mayor, followed Borron's suit, refusing apology.

On Friday morning, however, Ashworth told the MMI that he did apologize, along with "three of the board members." The board minutes and firsthand MMI accounts, however, refute this fact.

The board also refused to reimburse those persons whose flowers had been thrown away at the city's hand.

"You all don't know what it's like to have a daughter buried out there," said citizen Deloris Dameron, during her public comment. She told the council that the city cemetery had been the prettiest around for many years, and noted that is wasn't being kept up as well as it should be.

"Someday, you'll all know," she said. She told the council that when they do, then "they would feel the same."

Page 6 of 6 - * * *

The Higbee Cemetery Association, due to the ongoing nature of their current lawsuit, asked that the MMI no longer reach out to them for comment or documentation after April 19, per their attorney's request.

* * *

It was sunny — maybe even a little hot on the way out of the Alderman meeting on Monday. It rained later in the week —just a little, and just enough to remind you of where you are — but of late, warmer weather seems to have finally hit its Missouri corner. At least, until tomorrow or the next day. It's hard to say with these things.

For now, the Higbee Cemetery Association is still in limbo. They are still hovering. Still meeting in those cramped church quarters. Despite requests from the city for them not to do so, the group unanimously voted to stick with their normal routine and sit out at the Higbee Cemetery on Memorial Day weekend, passing on their side of the current goings-on, and collecting donations that they hope to be able to use again someday in the future. Following their contract termination, the Association has refused to give money to the City for cemetery upkeep. Back in April, the Association told the MMI that they had spent nearly $2,500 from their donated funds on lawyer fees, alone. They will be holding their annual meeting for members on Tuesday, May 21, 2013, at 6:30 p.m., at the Higbee Christian Church.

"It's one of the weirdest, stupidest things that I've ever dealt with in my life," Wright said. He noted that Margaret Jones, the woman who had left the aforementioned $11,000 donation for the Association, also left close to $14,000 for the city to use. When it was announced that the Cemetery Association had also received a large donation from her, however, Wright said, the City initially refused the money outright. After discussing their options, though, they decided to use the funds after all — to make improvements to Katy Park in town.

A hearing date has been set for City of Higbee v. Higbee Cemetery Association: June 18, per court documents. Randolph County Circuit Judge Scott A. Hayes will be on tap, starting at 1:30 p.m.

"That's news to me," Ashworth told the MMI on Friday, when informed of such.